A century to Happy Valley

June 30, 2013

Berwick, PA to State College, PA

Today we rode our first century!! We were all kind of scared to reach the 100 mile mark and knew that the area around State College was going to be pretty steep. The day started out pretty foggy which made all of the fields really cool looking. Right as we left the host site, we came across two giant dinosaur creatures! Obviously we stopped to take pictures with them. 

The ride to lunch was relatively easy and my group was flying through the miles. The route was pretty much flat the whole way, which was a welcome break from the hills. All of us couldn't stop staring at the beautiful farmland scenery we were passing! Who knew middle of nowhere Pennsylvania was so beautiful. 

Lunch was in the town of Lewisburg, PA, the home of Bucknell University! In high school, I went there a couple times for swimming state championships so it brought back a lot of awesome memories. It was one of our trip leaders birthdays today as well, so a bunch of her family that are from Lewisburg came to lunch and brought water ice, a very welcome treat on a scorching hot day. After lunch I met up with my parents who had driven to state college the night before. Dad joined the group I was biking with and we headed towards second lunch. Unlike the first part of the day, the second part had a lot more hills. I could feel the sweat dripping down my face all day, a weird feeling for a swimmer. At second lunch (we get two lunch stops if the ride is over 90 miles or its over 90° outside), my group headed to a pizza place an devoured a large pepperoni pizza in minutes along with giant glasses of ice water. The rest of the ride was still relatively flat with a few big rolling hills here and there until we rolled into state college. It was super cool biking into a town that I've driven into more than a couple times. It was fun to finally recognize things that we were going by. Once at the church, my best friend from high school who goes to Penn State, Lara, came by and I got to hang out with her for an hour or two before she drove home. It was amazing to see her again!! That night I went out to dinner with my parents, brother, and my brothers friend. Will is living at Penn State this summer so it all worked out perfectly! Overall it was a challenging day biking the farthest I've ever biked in my life, but really awesome to do part of it with my dad, who killed it by the way!